June and Elijah's 3rd Birthday

 I thought I better get the photos from Elijah's birthday posted here before the month of June is over. The weeks just fly by so fast - it seems we only just started the month! I guess most people feel that way about time, but it seems to move even faster with 6 young children! :-)

Blowing out his candles - with Fergus keeping a close eye on him! ;-)

Opening presents

A present from Clement! :-)

A toy rocket. WOW brand toys are great because they don't require any batteries!

A big cuddly soft Barney was much appreciated! :-)

And balloons - especially orange ones - are always fun.

Blasting off his rocket

Lego Duplo airport set - he loves things that fly.

A new jigsaw - something else he spends a lot of time doing.

Fergus loves that his brother enjoys sharing his new birthday presents with him.

The cake - a rocket seemed the obvious choice for a little boy who dreams of blasting off into space and visiting the planets! lol

Fergus *loved* eating the birthday cake - I think he's got a real sweet tooth! He gets very excited when he gets anything sweet, and begs for more!

Yep, asking for more cake! :-)

Counting the stars on his cake

Abigail is really growing up - hard to believe she'll be 10 in November. That will feel a bit scary to have a child with a double digit age! But it's also wonderful to see her becoming a young lady.

Deborah begged me to let her bake a banana cake this week! I'm rather bad about letting the kids in the kitchen - I prefer to limit the mess and chaos and just do it myself. But I do need to remind myself that they can only learn cooking and baking if I teach them! ;-) It was a book Deborah bought in a charity shop last week (some "annual") which included a recipe, so she just had to try it out. They did a really good job (with plenty of help) and they all enjoyed eating it too.

This photo is actually from a month or more ago - when Fergus first started moving about the house. Yes, backwards to start with - just like Abigail as a baby!

Pleased with himself too!

He *still* isn't properly crawling at speed (though today he's been up on all fours and rocking back and forth like he's going to really take off one of these times!). But as you can see in this photo here from a few days ago, he's left his play area on the rug behind, and headed off to explore the world! :-) He's pulling himself forward, and going round in circles, and whatever it takes to get places. He's very pleased with his new freedom too!

Elijah has been having fun with clocks lately. He's used the educational website called Starfall (primarily developed to teach phonics and reading but which has lots of maths now) and he's worked out how to tell time on the hour. He's not worked out any of the minutes, but anything o'clock, and he can tell you the time. He worked through one worksheet all by himself and begged for several more.

This is what the floor looks like with two little boys playing together - Duplo and wooden train track pieces everywhere. But I love to see how much they enjoy each others company - such special times to see the early bonding of brothers. And Elijah is soooo patient with Fergus when he destroys his various creations.

Such love! :-)

And another day - yep, these boys are always together.

We've had such a cold month of June - just crazy weather! So when there's the odd day with a bit of sunshine, the kids like to make the most of it! The nice days are just so rare, that we don't want to miss them! :-) One such day we decided to go outside while I read their history lesson to them. It was still blowing quite a breeze, so the wood shed made a good wind block, and meant you got the warmth of the sun, but kept their papers from blowing away.

Fergus enjoyed being outside - but would have been even happier if I had let him eat the book! ;-)

And after Elijah had done clock worksheets the previous day (his own choice!), it was nice that he was happy to just be a little boy and play with cars and trucks outside! :-) There are plenty of years to come for schooling - when you're just 3, it's good to be a child!

A picnic in the garden is always exciting for them. Just shows that you don't have to spend lots of money, nor do you need to go far (not always essential to leave the house!), to make memories. It's often the simple things that children love.

The wood shed (simply made of old pallets) which is filled with logs in the winter, becomes all sorts of things in the summer. It's really one of their favourite places to play outside. It made a great outdoor school room one day, and here in this photo, it was a pirate ship! :-)

I *love* how I've captured Elijah in the air in this photo! lol He's really full of bounce!

Deborah looking up to her big sister! ;-)

Fergus will go to great lengths and any efforts to find a book. Oh yes, books are THE best! Especially for eating!

Lunch time the other day - carrot & courgette soup is sooo good, you really need 2 spoons to enjoy it! It's quite fun to see how much Fergus *loves* to eat! You really can't eat anything in front of him without him smacking his lips and making sounds with his tongue, and really acting like he feels left out if you don't share it with him! :-) A few of my children were really *not* interested in starting solids when they were a baby, so it's lovely to see how excited he is!

Carl & Stephanie's Visit

I just realised that I never got round to blogging about our time with Carl & Stephanie at the end of last month. It was SO good to see them again and really meant a lot to have them come up here and see us while they were in Scotland. The last time I saw *any* of my family at all was in January 2014, when Leah & Caleb were still in Scotland. :-( So it's been such a long time since we've had any family around, which made the few days we spent with cousins all the more special.

Growing up in Texas, I guess it was easy to take family for granted. They were just *always* there - you never imagined a time without them. I have such a *huge* extended family - it would be seriously hard to count the numerous cousins on both side of my family, not to mention a ton of aunts & uncles, and great-aunts and great-uncles, my grandparents. Just so many wonderful people that I am blessed to have as family. But sadly, they are ALL far away in distant lands - nearly all of them in North America, and most of them in Texas. Anyway, my children have a very different childhood to my own, and get to grow up without any family in their life - just their mum & dad! :-( So, without rambling any further, said ALL that to say, it was a wonderful blessing to have a few days with Stephanie and her 4 children. The kids really enjoyed the company - real cousins to play with, not just looking at photos of cousins on the fridge! We didn't see a lot of Carl, as he was busy with synod meetings in Inverness. But it was special to spend time with his wife and children! :-)

Abigail and Claire playing together - they were probably some kind of peasants weaving baskets in their hut! Just the sort of thing I loved to pretend when I was a girl!

Louis, Carl Jr, and Clement riding scooters together

Carl Jr and Louis

Deborah fell in love with 18 month old Thomas - she loves to mother little ones! :-)

While Stephanie and kids were with us, we had our normal homeschool group in Inverness, which they joined us for. And since our car only fits the 8 of us, I decided to take my 4 boys on the train, and Peter and the girls took everyone else in the car. So the boys had a day out on the train with their mama - fun times! :-)

Fergus enjoyed the train journey!

Biggest boys and Fergus

Not to forget cute Elijah! :-)

Elijah *loves* his little brother sooooo much!

Sitting on the train like a big boy!

After the homeschool group indoor time, we always go out to the park when the weather is dry. The kids love the space out there. Abigail and Claire are in photo above.

Kids on the basket swing

Sweet little Thomas :-)

Stephanie! :-) It's amazing to think how God works and orders the little things in our lives. Stephanie was my pen-pal when I was a teenager - I think she was only about 13 or 14 years old (or maybe even just 12!) when she replied to a "pen pal ad" I had in a homeschooling girls magazine. She didn't even subscribe to the magazine herself - a friend gave her some old issues. And then a number of years later, she came to Scotland for my wedding, and it wasn't long before Carl asked her to marry him! :-D (She had been to see us in Texas a few years before, lest it sounds like they had just met for the first time!) Anyway, they make a wonderful couple and I'm so glad they found each other!

One of Henrietta's boys with his grandma - love this photo of the two of them together.

When your family is all very far away, good friends are all the more special - I feel very blessed to have Henrietta as a friend! She was up in Inverness  with her two youngest children, visiting her mum (who is recently widowed) and they came along to our homeschool group for a bit. It was lovely to see them. I first met Henrietta when I had just turned 16 years old and was in London on my first trip to the UK. It feels a whole lifetime ago, and I was just a child really! :-) Henrietta was a dear friend to my late mom.

Elijah *loves* big slides!

How many kids can you fit on a swing?!

Quite a few it seems!

On our way home on the train that evening - the boys wanted me to get a picture of this barrel planter train at Beauly station.

Elijah loved spotting all the animals along the way

Fergus *loved* the views

Excited

Taking it all in :-)

These last four photos, I've pinched from Henrietta! (hope that's ok!) ;-) Not the best photo of me, but nice to have one of me and Stephanie together!

Henrietta's boys, Carl Jr, and Claire

With Abigail

Well, guess that's all for now. It's nearly 11pm, and there are still two loads of washing on the line to be brought in (since the baby has only just gone down for the night)! :-p At least there's plenty of daylight though, with being so far north here in Scotland. That happens to be my favourite part about summer in Scotland - that it hardly gets dark at all. Now if only it would warm up a bit, that would be wonderful! It did get to around 17c yesterday & today, which felt pretty amazing after such cold temperatures lately.

Hopefully I'll get another post up soon, as Elijah's 3rd birthday was last week, so have some photos from that, etc.